And on a Monday afternoon, too. Whatever happened to Friday (or, at least, Wednesday to prevent Thanksgiving long weekend doom) afternoon for this kind of announcement?

Incidentally, shocking the frogs have been able to hold out this long.

Quoting: ReVbo™

Will be fascinating to see what metals do in overnight trading.

I wonder if Germany will be in Moody's cross hairs next?

Quoting: Lady Jane Smith

Nothing will happen with metals until early next year. The central banks are buying every bit of Physical that they can find for when the BIS changes it's tier rules to let Gold become a tier 1 asset as it should have been all along.

I mean change a A to a A- then to a B, and what outcomes will come of it?

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 13838165

Pensions and other large funds rely on "growth" calculations that depend on the stability/reliability of their investments. They come up with that stability/reliability through risk analysis, which looks at ratings.

If the ratings go down, their "value" as an investment goes down, and the future value of pensions goes down.

And when the solvency of these pensions are relying on ridiculously impossible growth rates of 5-8%, and they are unable to do that anymore since government bonds are too risky, well then you just lost your pension.

There are other reasons of course. Governments want high ratings for their bonds so people will buy them. That's how they keep the government running; that's how they make money... THAT'S HOW THEY RUN UP THEIR ENORMOUS DEBTS.

If you have bad ratings, nobody buys your bonds, and the government can't pay its bills.

After Dynegy agreed to buy Enron, Moody's tried to calculate the chances that the deal would go through, that Enron would remain strong until it was completed and that the combined company would carry a strong rating, said John Diaz, managing director for Moody's power and energy group.

Moody’s Corp. (MCO) and Standard & Poor’s lost a bid for dismissal of fraud claims in a suit by investors claiming the companies falsely assigned inflated ratings to notes sold by Morgan Stanley (MS) that were backed by subprime mortgages...Scheindlin also dismissed the investors’ fraud claims against the bank and aiding-and-abetting claims against the rating companies, ruling that it was the rating companies, not Morgan Stanley, that issued the ratings.